Analysis of Oscar Wilde's Poem 'Ulysses' and His Life, Appunti di Inglese

Scarica Analysis of Oscar Wilde's Poem 'Ulysses' and His Life e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! . Alfred Tennyson . . ● Queen Victoria read this poem a lot, compared his poems to the Bible ● He wrote in memoriam for the death of his friend but the queen uses this for the consolation of the death of her husband Ulysses classroom ● Dramatic monologue ● Meter: iambic pentameter, blank verse ● Form without rhymes, it has to sound like a speech, it’s a continuous flow of feeling ● Ulysses describes himself as an idle king ● Penelope is described as an aged wife, it’s the only mention of her in the poem ● He becomes a name, he knew names, places and also himself ● Contrast, then he says that he would like to discover the untravelled world ● Living is something else than breathing ● He rather have more than one life ● Then he introduces Thelemacus, his son, who knows how to rule people and who leaves the isle at ● He maybe involves the readers saying they are both getting old ● He wants to go beyond sunset ● Poem divided in 3 stanzas: ➢ First one: Ulysses describes his dissatisfaction with his idle life ➢ Second part: He speaks about his son ➢ Third stanza: He’s speaking to his old crew about the need to go again to the sea ● Homer’s Ulysses: wanted to go back to Ithaca ● Dante’s Ulysses: 26th canto of Inferno, he’s a sinner, he finds himself restless in Ithaca and wants to gain the experience of the world ● Tannyson’s Ulysses is in an intermediate moment between Homer’s and Dante’s vision ● Ulysses was published after a long period, he was addicted to alcohol and became pessimist, he was still mourning his friend but he knows he must restart ● The king was escaping his responsibilities ● Robert Browning was another author ● Theme of death, he’s embracing his destiny ● The mysterious place he describes can be after-life ● He speaks after the sunset ● Other theme: reflection on life and what he’s living ● It’s also an invitation to pursue one’s goals ● Spirit of the age (Victorian age): ➢ idea of exploration ➢ new idea of heroism, no heroism but everyday life, heroism based on moral values, he won’t surrender even if he knows he’ll be defeated . Robert Louis Stevenson . . ● He was born in Scotland ● He came from an upper middle class family who put pressure because they wanted him to be a medical ● They were puritans, they were very strict, he lived in a very strict atmosphere ● He also had health problems, respiratory illness ● He decided to spend his life on a boat ● He married an american divorced woman that had a son ● He also wrote travel books, adventure stories and accounts of his journeys ● 1886: Dr Jackyll and Mr. Hide ● Theme of the double, the duplicity of the victorian age ● It’s a gothic novel ● Role of science and development of chemistry, presence of drugs ● All the main characters are man, women ere excluded from the society during victorian age ● Several point of view, 4 narrators ● Setting: it’s set in London, in a decadent area but with respectable street, but he had in mind Edinburgh ● The book was defined a shilling shocker (or dime novel), that described cheap horror stories that were very simple, entertaining and popular ● His intention was to write a shilling shocker to earn money, he was supported by his publisher ● Wilkie Collins’ The woman in white, Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and Sheridan Le Fanu were the major authors and novels at the time ● He had some nightmares during the night and his wife told him to use one of his nightmares as a source for his novel ● A man is transformed into another man by taking a potion, idea of voluntary and involuntary change ● There was a general fascination of the gothic atmosphere, about Jack the ripper, crime, violence, darkness ● He wrote the novel in two weeks ● He was aware of the quality of what he had written ● The original title was Strange case of Dr Jekyll and mr Hyde, without the article, it’s similar to a headline of a newspaper and resembled more a Scotland Yard case ● It referred to: ➢ a police case ➢ a scientific case ➢ a medical case ● The psychoanalysis was becoming more evident ● He was a member of psychic society The novel pag 255 ● Every chapter is named as a headline of a newspaper ● Idea of killing and hiding from the title, someone is chasing someone else ● In 1946 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was the first novel published by i gialli mondadori ● Idea of the double, an ancient idea common during the 19th century literature production: ➢ Edgar Allan Poe ➢ Dostoevskij ➢ Oscar Wilde ● Christian literature is full of devil that transforms himself ● Gaol is the spelling for Jail ● He wrote this ballad in prison, denouncing death penalty ● At the same time he is also denouncing the living conditions of prisoners in Britain Prisons ● Reading gaol is a prison in London ● Published after he was released from prison, under the name of C33, the name he had in prison, block C, landing 3 and cell 3 ● He was condemned to force labor ● It’s his last work written, it’s a testament of his life ● The ballad is dedicated to Charles Thomas Wooleridge, the man executed in the ballad ● It’s an indictment of the death penalty, it’s a protest poem against the way prisoners were kept ● Incremental repetitions ● The ballad tells a dramatic story and starts in medias res ● There isn’t a physical description of the characters ● Prisoners live in a small cell and can only see the sky from a triangural window ● It reminds of Dante’s inferno and the atmosphere described in Coleridge’s ballad ● Theme of paradox: man killing the woman he loves, and the fact that prisons destroyed prisoners’ life and dignity ● The ballad has a circular shape ● The atmosphere is gothic, dark, bloomy, violent ● Theme of the scorse towards the prison . civil rights . . ● They are defined in the universal declaration of human rights ● They were prohibited to women ● In 1857 divorce became law, but the conditions were very unfair, a man could get a divorce if he could prove his wife was cheating, but not the opposite ● Married women’s propriety act, 1882, before women’s conditions were similar to slavery, married women could keep proprieties even when they got married ● In 1882 Millicent Fawcett in London was snatched from her purse and had to declare that the purse was her husband’s property, she denounces this fact , it’s the first step to declare women’s rights ● 1870, with an act women could keep their earnings, right to property ● Women earned less than men, so when they divorced couldn’t maintain themselves and couldn’t keep their children after the divorce Emmeline Pankhurst’s speech ● Emmeline Pankhurst was the leader of women’s movement ● Speech gave in the USA, she moved from Britain to the USA ● She says she’s a soldier of a civil war declared by women ● Approach of a soldier, revolutionary movement ● They were fighting for the right of vote ● The feminist movement became violent againist police and the achivement to get the right to vote became more difficult Women’s rights in Britain ● 1868, women could attend university without getting a degree ● 1870, women could keep their own earnings ● 1882, after marriage women could keep their properties ● 1894, women could vote in minor elections, rural district ● 1918, women over 30 were allowed to vote if they belonged to a wealthy class ● 1928, all women over 21 were allowed to vote ● 1929 England had the first woman prime minister Cimamanda Adichie’s speech ● She’s a famous writer ● The speech was turned into a novel, we should all be feminist 1. He died in a crash in Nigeria in December 2005 2. Feminists are women that are unhappy because they can’t find husbands 3. A cane 4. Lagos 5. Because the woman handed money to the man but he thought money couldn't be hers, so he thanked the man next to her, Louis 6. Because physical strength was essential to survive, and men are in general physically stronger 7. They thought she was a sex worker 8. That she’s as human as a man and she’s worthy of acknowledgement 9. Breadwinner 10. What is a girl doing in a room with four boys? Because it looks like its the girl’s fault 11. Women are taught to be the cookers in the house but the most famous chefs in the world are men 12. Because they are afraid of looking too feminine and not to be taken seriously 13. An ‘ugly suit’ instead of a shiny lipgloss and a skirt to look more masculine 14. Apes, she’s referring to the fact that female apes bow down to male apes 15. Bottom power 16. Culture does not make people, people makes culture 17. Feminist is a man or a woman who says ‘Yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today, and we must fix it, we must do better’ 18. Her brother 19. The fact that people often say that females can’t be too ambitious